CHAPTER 90: CHAPTER 89. WHAT WAS, WHAT IS & WHAT MUST NEVER BE

"What do you mean," Vivianne repeated, stepping closer, her voice trembling between fear and disbelief, "the empress consort is still alive or not?"

Roxanne opened her mouth but hesitated. For once, words didn’t come easily to her. The night air around them felt heavier, pressing against her chest. She had spent months shielding Vivianne from the darker side of politics, the power plays, the blood bargains, and the corruption festering beneath the empire’s gold, all to let her wife live peacefully, even if only for a while. But now, the lies were breaking apart. The emperor’s sins, the deaths, the forbidden acts, none of it could stay hidden anymore.

"Sweetheart," Roxanne said quietly, her voice gentle but strained, "you should be asleep."

Vivianne shook her head, her green eyes flashing with hurt and frustration. "Don’t you dare tell me that now, wife. What is it?" Her voice cracked, raw and trembling. Every word reflected the pain of not knowing. "Tell me what’s going on. What does the empress consort have to do with all this?"

Her voice rose at the end, echoing faintly through the balcony. The cold wind caught the loose strands of her hair, tossing them like silk in the moonlight. "She’s still my sister, wife!"

"Marvessa!" she called suddenly, her tone sharp and commanding.

Her personal guard flinched at the sound. Marvessa lowered her gaze, her posture tight, unsure whether she should answer or melt back into the shadows where she belonged. But before she could move, Roxanne raised a hand, a silent order to stay where she was.

Roxanne turned back to Vivianne, her expression unreadable but her eyes full of weight. "Dietrich has been killing omegas," she began slowly, her tone steady and deliberate, "to strengthen his alpha dominance, to feed his control."

Vivianne’s breath caught. "For what? He didn’t—" Her voice broke off, the rest of the sentence dying on her lips. Her gaze drifted toward Marvessa, not wanting her to hear about the word she’s going to say after.

Roxanne’s voice came again, low and grim. "She knows about you," she said. "The spirits told her that you’re the one who cheated death."

Vivianne blinked, stunned for a heartbeat, then straightened with effort. "Well—" she cleared her throat and continued, though her voice trembled faintly. "Those things didn’t happen in my first life. If he had tried to kill me, or if he wanted to use me for power, I would’ve known. Dietrich may be a bastard, but he wasn’t reckless. He was smart, wise even. At least, wiser than his father."

"He just... couldn’t accept the truth," she said quietly. "He couldn’t stand that I was the one he couldn’t control. And in his pride, he turned that pain into hatred. He used me—my beauty, my weakness, my body, all for the sake of the empire he claimed to protect."

Roxanne frowned, her brows drawing together as the cold realization settled over her. "Then what changed?"

"Is it because he couldn’t marry you?" Roxanne tried to speak.

"But, I wasn’t promised to him! I choose you!" Vivianne can feel the dreaded feeling in her heart.

Hearing that, Roxanne leaps forward and quickly pulls Vivianne into her arms. "I know, I know, it’s just—" Before her words are finished, something happens, and Marvessa moves in front of Vivianne to protect her.

The wind howled, sudden and sharp, slicing through the tense silence that hung between Roxanne, Vivianne, and Marvessa. The torches flickered violently, their flames bending backward as if bowing to something unseen.

Then, time itself stopped.

The world froze mid-motion: the leaves halted in midair, the dust suspended like glittering shards of glass, and even the sound of the wind died into a deafening stillness. A faint golden light began to bloom from nowhere, expanding outward in delicate gears and rotating circles of light.

From the core of that radiance, he descended, neither walking nor floating, but existing between seconds. His form shimmered like a mirage of reality itself.

His skin is the color of pale steel, polished and timeless, as if chiseled from the very memory of the first clock. Long white hair flowed around him like strands of moonlight, weightless and untouched by gravity.

His eyes were hidden behind a single golden monocle that gleamed with shifting constellations, and beneath it, his other eye pulsed faintly, not with color, but with time itself, spiraling endlessly inward.

Golden armor clung to his frame, intricate and flawless, carved with the precision of a master craftsman. Beneath the transparent plates on his chest, gears turned and ticked, emitting a soft blue glow that pulsed like a heartbeat. Huge clock hands crossed behind him like wings of a divine mechanism, releasing arcs of blue lightning that hummed in time with each movement.

In his right hand, he held a crescent-shaped scythe forged from luminous brass and orbiting clock parts, glowing faintly with runic light. In his left hand, an hourglass spun lazily in midair, filled with light instead of sand, the essence of passing moments, forever draining and refilling.

When he spoke, his voice layered upon itself, echoing like a thousand overlapping whispers from every age that had ever existed. "Because he meddled with what shouldn’t be touched," he intoned, each word vibrating through the air, rippling through their bones.

The torches flickered violently as time itself seemed to bend around his presence. "I am Chronos, keeper of what was, what is, and what must never be. Dear spirit kings’ bearer."

Marvessa’s jaw fell open.

She had heard stories of Chronos, the time spirit, the lone one, the one she thought was only a bedtime story, the untouchable one who existed before the first dawn, before the world had learned to count the seconds. But no mortal had ever seen him, for he never shared his power, never intervened. And yet, here he is, standing before them in all his divine figure, his very existence bending reality.

Chronos’s gaze shifted toward Vivianne, the gears in his chest glowing faintly with a rhythmic hum. "When you took your own life," he said, his tone soft yet thunderous, "that man mourned as though the universe itself had ended. He neglected his kingdom, abandoned his reason, and sought every forbidden secret in the shadows. He gave everything, his soul, his sanity, to turn back the threads of time."

The air around them trembled, a faint shimmer of gears and blue light swirling like smoke.

"But I could not bear to watch him trap you again, to twist fate for a love that was never meant to be," Chronos continued, his expression tightening as he pointed a long, luminous finger toward Vivianne. "He was never destined to walk beside you. He could never control you."

Then his gaze turned to Roxanne. His brows furrowed sharply, and a faint scoff left his lips. "You two were meant to be together from the start. But you—" his tone carried a note of exasperation, "were too foolish to listen, lost in the North, too stubborn to see what was right before you. And stuck there mourning about your pitiful self."

Roxanne blinked in disbelief. For a moment, she could swear she saw the ancient spirit roll his eyes. Beside her, Marvessa’s voice is barely a whisper as she translates every divine word.

"So I turned your time back," Chronos said, his tone clipped, "and restored your memories. So that this time, you would be the wiser one and finally choose this stupid alpha."

Vivianne’s mouth twitched, almost laughing despite the gravity in the air. "You mean... Did Dietrich turn back time? He remembers things like I do?"

Chronos’s glowing eye dimmed. "No," he said. "He remembers only that you belong to him. Nothing else."

"That explains his recklessness," Roxanne murmured under her breath.

Then, from behind them, a sudden voice rose, sharp, angry, and wet. "Then why didn’t you say anything from the start?" Undine appeared in a rush of water, fury in her eyes; with a furious motion, she hurled a torrent straight at the Spirit of Time.